


Conviction

by thingswithwings



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Angst, Clones, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-04-14
Updated: 2006-04-14
Packaged: 2017-10-24 03:13:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/258302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thingswithwings/pseuds/thingswithwings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John tries to convince him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Conviction

John tries to convince him.

He messes up his hair more and drawls out his California vowels and talks incessantly about Ferris wheels and football.

And he kisses Rodney that one time.

Rodney throws up afterward.

-

John had said John-things, like _what’s the harm, Rodney_ and _we need to activate it to find out._ Rodney had said Rodney-things like _the harm is in dying a messy and painful death_ and _okay, wait, just let me do it_. John was still the button-pusher, though, so Rodney didn’t do it.

Rodney sometimes thinks he’s lucky.

-

They hadn’t thought about the device until after. Months later, when one of John’s suicide missions ended badly. At first, it’d been all tearful eulogies and posthumous medals and a folded up American flag. No one thought about the device. Everyone grieved. Even the city grieved, and not even Rodney could convince Atlantis to restore anything but the most basic systems. But no one thought about it, until Elizabeth did, on one of those days that called for another one of those missions that John used to be so good at, and darn it, they’d already used up the only John Sheppard they had.

Except Elizabeth didn’t see it that way.

Elizabeth remembered the device. The one that had started making an endless row of Johns before Rodney shut it down.

Elizabeth cradles Zelenka’s body with her withered arm and asks Rodney to turn it back on. Rodney doesn’t, but Simpson does. She’s too practical to ever be a good physicist, but she’s one hell of a mechanical engineer, and she gets the job done.

-

So now, anyway, Rodney’s job is to make new jumpers, because they’re running out.

And every single one of them tries to convince him.

 _I’m the same,_ says the first one. Rodney believes just long enough to groan against its mouth, just long enough to step into the heat coming off of its body and smell the John-smell on its skin. Rodney believes. The first one doesn't get a folded-up flag.

After the first one, they all blur together. Sometimes they try to seduce him. Mostly they try to be his friend. One of them hit him, once. Their memories are all frozen at the moment the needle pricked John’s finger and the vats began to bubble. Rodney sometimes wants nothing more than to shove his P-90 into those puppy dog eyes and squeeze and squeeze and squeeze, just like he was taught.

-

They beat the Wraith.

-

Rodney waits until they win, which might make him the wrong kind of pragmatic or maybe the right kind of romantic. The last one doesn’t have to do a suicide run, so Rodney helps.


End file.
